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Deep inside the cavernous backshop at Cheyenne, Wyo., a giant is coming back to life. I saw it with my own eyes on a visit earlier this week. Here's what I saw.
Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4014 is about as disassembled as you can get and still be counted as a locomotive. The wheels are out from underneath it – all 24 of them – and 100-ton freight car trucks support the frame. It currently holds the title of the world’s largest 0-0-0-0. The boiler is as empty as it has been since...

Spring is right around the corner, and for most of us that means more time trackside with a camera. For better or worse, when you send an email to photoeditor@trainsmag.com, I'll be the first one that sees it. I get a lot of questions about specific images, which we often have no immediate use for. People, it seems, want to see the photos they've already taken in print, but don't want to give any thought to shooting for publication when trackside. That's a shame because a typical issue of Trains...

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, this is the time of year when I anticipate mainline steam schedules, plan trips to see newly restored and notable locomotives, and find time to make calls and send emails to my steam friends to see who is planning to go where and where we might cross paths, or tracks in our case. We’ll see who is willing to break the bank and stretch vacation time to make one more trip. It’s an optimistic time, when we all look forward to what will excite and i...

We are taught early on in childhood not to brag, especially about ourselves, and particularly not about home towns, or native states. Reckless bragging is disgraceful. A sign of poor manners. But maybe you will indulge me in a bit of gentle bragging on my home state, North Carolina. I was back recently and imposed on the good folks in the capital city of Raleigh for a preview of the new passenger station under construction and set for completion this spring.
If you haven’t heard of this...

Where I grew up in the snow belt regions Lake Erie shadows, and where eight feet of snow in a year is an average, not a record, when someone bought a car that's new to them, you ask how it drives in the snow.
Oh, you let them brag about their purchase first: The gas mileage, sunroof, third row or trunk space, how they got a "brand new" spare tire thrown in, or how much get-up-and-go it has, and how great it sounds with the aftermarket subwoofer the first owner installed. They might even...

So we’re doing some reshuffling of office space here at Kalmbach, which means a lot of people are going through their desks and tossing out stuff that they don’t need to cart down the hall. (Trains ‘ relocation is still in the future, so my office is just as cluttered as ever. The 37 bobbleheads on the window sill are safe for now)
One of the people who did make the move this week was former Trains editor J. David Ingles, senior editor at Classic Trains. During his cleaning pr...

We’re throwing a steam-powered party this August, and you’re invited. We’re sponsoring a photo charter with the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, that 64-miles of serpentine narrow gauge tracks that seem to dart across the state line more than there are peaks in the spectacular San Juan Mountains that is home for this line (OK, that’s an exaggeration, but it sure seems like it at times). We’re there to commemorate the last runs of Rio Grande freights across 10,0...

I usually start thinking about planning travel to enjoy what little steam is left running about this time of year. I blame it on Southern Railway and Jim Bistline, who set the railroad’s steam excursion schedule every winter. It was the most anticipated piece of mail that I can recall as a teenager or a young adult in the late 1970s and early 1980s: You could see what locomotives Southern was running, where, and when, and plan a whole year’s worth of steam railroading fun. There were...

Ask the editors at Trains.
When I read the statement from Amtrak at 12:49 p.m. (Central) in my email inbox, I swore — a lot.
One trainset of the one and only high-speed rail service in the Western Hemisphere pulled apart on the Northeast Corridor.
The New York Post reports that Acela Express train 2150 was moving at 125 mph when it separated in Maryland. The news organization shows a photo of what appears to be a loose drawbar on the semi-permanently coupled trainset hanging betwe...

As we learn more this Sunday morning about the overnight collision between Amtrak's Silver Star and a CSX Transportation freight, I can't help but think that the national passenger carrier is on the cusp of a major change – for better, or worse.
With three high-profile incidents in less than 60 days, Amtrak is undoubtedly under scrutiny from regulators, legislators, and host railroads. It's possible (but not likely) that none of those will be found to be Amtrak's fault; it's also possible...

They were neither well executed nor worth much as great art. Some were poorly composed, and others were over or under exposed. But they were amazing sights to me -- my first action railroad pictures with a good 35mm camera. And they were made 40 years ago this month.
The occasion was the first good weather in the winter of 1978 when, as a 16-year-old fan, I was ready to try out the Nikkormat FT-3 that my parents had given me the Christmas before. They’d heard my disappointment in my Kodak...

Our special issue, Hot Spots, is available now, and it has me excited about traveling to great train watching places this year. We broke down our 100-page guide into three categories: Places to watch a lot of trains. Places that are scenic wonders. And places that are icons in our common obsession. Like everyone else, I have my favorites. Here’s my top 10, and be sure to get your own copy of Hot Spots at https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/special-issue/vt-tr05180101-c.
1. The ...

What would you say is the most famous passenger car in the United States? The well-traveled PV Caritas? Lucius Beebe’s office car Virginia City. Amtrak office car 10,000?
It’s a debatable list, and one that would have to include in its top 10 an office car that I have heard about all my life and visited for the first time recently while on business in Florida: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s office car Ferdinand Magellan. This classic heavyweight Pullman makes its home at the Gold...

The Appalachian Mountains, where the Clinchfield Railroad operated, was a place of heavily forested mountains, dense hardwood forests, and rushing whitewater streams. The environment last week in which I found the railroad’s most famous diesel locomotive, F7 No. 800, was much different. It was a relatively flat expanse of land with numerous lakes. The exhaust tossled palm tree leaves and tickled the Spanish moss. Yes, this is a fish out of water story, the tale of a locomotive on winter br...

I was in Florida last week. No, I was not on vacation, neither at a beach nor Mouse World. In fact, it was rainy the first half of the trip, and down right cold (for Florida) on the second half (38 degrees Sunday morning. The primary railroad topic, as it has been in the Sunshine State for generations, was passenger trains. The newest of these trains, Brightline, was days from the start of revenue service. The oldest have been in museums for decades and date back to the early 20th century. Both ...

It has been a rough few days for all of us who love railroading. Everybody is heartbroken about the tragic Amtrak Cascades derailment. Many of us know people who were on the crew or who were among the passengers who were injured. Friends have lost colleagues or pals. It is our worst nightmare come true.
Compounding it all is the chatter that goes on in the fog that lingers in the minutes, hours, and days after a catastrophe. One of the safest ways to travel doesn’t seem so safe in the eye...

Nothing warms my heart more than looking at children’s artwork. It’s so innocent, intense, and uninhibited. Furthermore, I love to see railroads as the focus. Talgo sent its holiday email greeting by way of the winner of their holiday art contest. Here’s 12-year-old Roland Richards’ Talgo-themed Christmas card. Great job, Roland! Here are other winners from Talgo's contest.
Trains are so relevant to our lives in so many ways and can be shared with our children and gr...

Here’s my list for the top 10 preservation stories for 2017.
1. Texas restored for Atlanta History Center
Besides the locomotives at Promontory, what pair of locomotives is more famous than the General and the Texas of Civil War Great Locomotive Chase fame? You’d be hard pressed to find a set that’s better known. Long confined to the dingy basement of Atlanta’s Cyclorama building in Grant Park, the 1849 Texas got a cosmetic overhaul prior to its placement in the Atlanta...

Where would you put a photo exhibit about the famous Milwaukee Road Beer Line if you had your choice of places? A brewery, of course! That’s what the Center for Railroad Photography & Art is doing with its photographic study of the Wallace W. Abbey images that record this famous freight route that served the industry that made Milwaukee famous and that included famous Fairbanks-Morse diesels for motive power. It opened Thursday night, and the Trains staff was there to check it out whil...

There are, without exaggeration, thousands of places across this continent to stop and watch a train. From a lonely grade crossing in Iowa to a jam-packed subway platform in Queens. (Our newest special issue "Hot Spots" details 75 of the best.) While I can't claim to have seen them all (there are a LOT of grade crossings in Iowa!), I believe that I have seen enough to make a few recommendations for our discerning readers:
Northwest Ohio
This is where I'm from, so of course I'm a little biase...

The quote about “all who wander are not lost” was on my mind over the holiday. My family and I were in Duluth, Minn., to visit family and friends. Normally, this is a cold, snowy place this time of year. We, however, were blessed with warm temperatures and no precipitation. There was snow on the ground to make it look like late fall in the Northwoods. So, that gave us opportunities to train and ship watch in this fascinating Midwestern port city.
Last spring, we were here for BNSF&r...

Clinchfield. The word conjures images of a regional railroad defined by multiple sooted black six-axle units in run 8, working against gravity and curvature, hard against slide detection fences, soaring across bridges, and diving into the cool of 55 tunnels, to move coal out of the heart of Appalachia. It brings to mind railroaders, many of them multi-generational, working locals, mine runs, coal trains, and time freights across 277 of the most rugged and beautiful mountain railroad miles ever b...

Readers and even one or two Trains correspondents have asked me in recent days why I didn’t write about China’s CRRC as a potential bidder for GE Transportation. And, to a lesser extent, Canada’s Bombardier.My plain and simple explanation: Both are poor fits for GE Transportation as it stands today.Bombardier first. The Canadian industrial giant is in trouble. It makes airplanes and passenger trains for international markets but relies heavily on support from the Province of Qu...

There are some days in your career as a lover of railroads when words fail to describe the sheer enjoyment of a day spent trackside with a special subject and many good friends. Friday was one of those days. We were with CSX and a group of people who’d made sure that Clinchfield F7 No. 800 and SD45 No. 3632 were ready to pull the 75th anniversary Santa Train on the former Clinchfield Railroad. Today was the positioning move for the Santa Train, running from Kingsport, Tenn., to Shelb...

Not many people can say that their employer played a large role in their childhood – family business tycoons excluded. It is one of the perks of working for Trains (and down the hall from Model Railroader). This week, though, I was able to draw a link from my career back to my childhood thanks to some office cleaning.
I started subscribing to Model Railroader in grade school, an annual gift from my parents. Soon thereafter, Trains was added to the tab, too. I still recall a lot of what'...

If you were watching CNN this past Sunday night, you did not imagining anything you heard. Yes, you did hear the name of one of the railroad enthusiast community’s earliest and most iconic champions, Lucius Beebe, called out. Yes, it was during a most unlikely program -- Anthony Bourdain’s profile of celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower. And yes, they were talking about the same Beebe you and I know as the author of “High Iron,” “Mixed Train Daily,” “Mansions o...

CSX’s Santa Train: When Union Pacific No. 3985 played Clinchfield 676
When Clinchfield F7 No. 800, the railroad’s first diesel locomotive, heads up the 75th anniversary Santa Train on Saturday, it will be a landmark event: The 1948 unit in its original gray and yellow garb, back on home rails, and once again in charge of the world’s longest Christmas parade, a trip of about 100 miles from Shelbiana, Ky., to Kingsport, Tenn. But not that long ago, 25 years to be exact, there ...

With the 75th anniversary running of CSX’s Clinchfield Railroad Santa Train on Nov. 18 just a few days away, it’s a good time to review the Clinchfield story in print. Several great books have been put together about the Clinchfield, a regional railroad built to outstanding engineering standards through some of the most difficult terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. Under the control of the Atlantic Coast Line and Louisville & Nashville since the 1920s, the railroad ...

Today’s debut of Clinchfield No. 800 in Huntington, W.Va., returned to its original gray and yellow paint scheme of 1948 thanks to CSX, is a welcomed sight. When it comes to locomotives, my pecking order is steam, cab unit, and Alcos, in that order. I have nothing against other locomotives. I like them all, but to me a streamlined cab unit is a special machine, a locomotive wrapped in a distinctive dress, a celebrity who is going some place special.
I’m especially happy to see this ...

On Monday, the graphic artists who work on Trains and the editorial staff gathered in a ritual we call the “pin up.” It’s the one and only time when the entire feature well of a magazine is printed out and placed on the walls of a room. We lock ourselves in this chamber for an hour or so and review what we’re about to give you, the readers. We critique layouts, argue over headlines, adjust photos, and size up the timing and placement of stories. Sometimes we change the or...